Linux glitches

[WebPilot]

:~$ uptime
12:21:19 up 13 days, 11:55, 11 users, load average: 1.41, 1.44, 1.37

[WebPilot]

:~$ uptime
01:44:24 up 15 days, 1:18, 11 users, load average: 1.79, 1.82, 1.69

> 15 days 'up' with a µSoft Windows machine … never.

[WebPilot]

Not a glitch, but rather an advantage of the os system. Fun at the command prompt!

[WebPilot]

[tufty]

Here's an *actual* linux glitch, you may be able to help.

I inherited a Toshiba NB100 netbook after it suffered a "ballistic incident" that ended with it embedded in a wall - after recovering the files on its hard drive, I was given the carcass. Despite having no screen, and a cracked motherboard that killed the onboard ethernet and one of the USB ports, it still works with external video. A fine candidate for making the guts of a mame machine, I figured. wifi still works, as long as it's close to the access point (the "antennae" are a couple of bits of wire dangling off the card) so net installs work fine.

Photos here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/28888140@N ... 168747184/

So, I tried the ubuntu netbook remix, which works, but is dumbed down, and I don't need X - all I want is a framebuffer and a copy of advancemame - so it got gentoo-ed. Which is fine. Installed, and working. However, I have a problem with intelfb. Not the usual one, where mode switching isn't allowed, but one where the framebuffer modes are all fscked up.

It fires up with fbcon happily enough, modulo it ignores the video mode I tell it to use and switches to the resolution of the internal panel (1024x600); with a bit of buggering with the mode lines for fbset I can set it to 1024x768 happily enough for the console to work. However, when I try to use graphical apps (advmame), I get *at best* half the screen in use (results vary depending on use of the fb, svgalib or sdl drivers), colours are all buggered up, and so on. the same happens if I use any of the original modes in fb.modes via fbset, so I figure my problem lies there. But I can't work it out.

Shit like this is why I moved away from linux in the first place.

[tufty]

Fixed it. Needed to *explicitly* tell advancemame to use 32-bit mode, rather than leaving it to say to itself "hey, this is a 32-bit framebuffer, why don't I try and use it as though it's an 8-bit one instead". "Perfect video modes" my hairy arse.

grrrrrr.

Next up, "why /dev/input/* is not readable by anyone apart from root, and why you need to create an arcane rules file to make it accessible to anyone else".

[WebPilot]

Reads like you're having fun, Simon.

\n

I downloaded a kernel upgrade and had to reboot the machine. Before it did the software upgrade, it prompted me to keep my locally edited 'menu.lst' file before writing over it with a new file. Maybe, I missed this before, but I chose 'No' this time. No problems when the system rebooted.

[WebPilot]

\n

since last kernel upgrade ...

:~$ uptime
02:01:28 up 8 days, 1:44, 9 users, load average: 0.91, 0.79, 0.73

[WebPilot]

:~$ uptime
12:21:50 up 14 days, 12:04, 10 users, load average: 0.86, 1.12, 1.13
:~$

The only glitch or complaint I have, is that my trash can javascript icon does not show when I have an item or items in it. If I reboot, the reboot will remedy the situation, but I can live with the matter for now.

[WebPilot]

Needing something portable, I'm attempting to put Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS on a Toshiba Satellite, dual boot with XP. It did boot the Live CD!

[tufty]

Needing something portable, I'm attempting to put Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS on a Toshiba Satellite, dual boot with XP. It did boot the Live CD!

Forrest.

I finally got my little Tosh up and running as it should, ended up using Gentoo as I said, but it worked well enough with Ubuntu before. Personally, I don't get all the Ubuntu love, I loathe all that spurious UI crap (and this coming from someone who's used Macs by preference on the desktop since 1987) and Gnome's overall design sucks - trying to hard to be a mac, too hard to not be too far from Windows, and ending up not being good enough to be either. As for the diarrhoetic brown of Ubuntu 9.0.4's UI, I suspect corporate sabotage, probably by MS's Zune team. KDE has a much cleaner look, and feels faster, but is far too "Windows" for me.

The fact that one UI feels faster than another on a machine with a hyperthreading 1.6Ghz processor is a good sign that things are getting a teensy bit bloated at the front end.

If I was building a portable *n*x box these days I'd probably go hackintosh on one of Dell's little boxes, but otherwise either Gentoo or OpenBSD underneath with stock x.org and windowmaker on top. That said, all I tend to run is (X)emacs and other stuff that doesn't require Gnome or KDE (most of it is Motif based...)

If you're sticking with Ubuntu, I'd suggest moving up to the 9.x series. Lots more hardware fixes there, much less painful to install.

[WebPilot]

Simon,

Thanks for your opinion, but I like Ubuntu.

The 'brown' could probably be changed more to your liking. I always liked Fedora's 'Bubbles', but I missed the boat on that version.

KDE, well I like dragons, but ...

I'm sticking to 8.04 LTS for that reason , long term support.

In Jan of this year when I decided to go completely to unix, I tried other releases and variations of Ubuntu.

• in 64-bit mode, I immediately had problems with Firefox, there was no flash support at that time
• newer 8.x versions had 'quirks' that when I Googled for a solution, no one had at the time posted an answer
• the replacement for 8.04 LTS will arrive in 2011. By then I'll know this system pretty well and be ready for the upgrade.

Ubuntu was still easy to install on this machine. I started last night, and had it running in about 4 hours. That was my fault, since I wanted to do this one 'differently' and was doing a lot of reading before doing.

The machine was working locally, since I did not have it connected to the Internet during the install. All I did today was plug in the ethernet cable, boot it and I'm communicating with you on the Toshiba. That's easy enough, isn't it?

[WebPilot]

Not liking the partition arrangement I allowed last night, I re-installed the OS again today.

I now have partitions for:

• swap file
•  / , the system file folder and
• /home, the home directory

There are definite advantages to this arrangement.

It took 2 hrs. total, but the 2nd hr. was spent downloading and installing 232.2 MB (232 files) of system updates. I have some notes I can share next time.

[WebPilot]

Initially, the laptop had only a single 60 MB partition, occupied by XP.

[tufty]

60 GB, shurely.

Any particular reason you didn't separate out /usr/local (or /usr, even) to its own partition?